My Adventures in Self-Improvement

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30 Day To Something, Goals And Resources

Alright, this is going to be a pretty cut and dry post. I’m going to outline my goals in-depth and provide you with resources in case you want to join in on the challenge.

Language

As I’ve said in the last post, I plan on learning 10 phrases a day for the next 30 days starting Sep 1st. This is because I feel I haven’t made the progress i wanted because I didn’t have the push to. But this month is the month that I really kickstart my learning process. I’m not sure if this goal is sustainable in the long-term, but I believe that it works perfectly for a 30 day challenge.

As a study guide I’ll be using the Lonely Planet phrasebook. I picked this book because it was very detailed and in-depth. A phrasebook is a better choice than regular learning methods to kickstart language learning because the focus in a phrasebook is communication. They are made for tourist who don’t have the time to learn everything grammatical in a language or learn it word by word. The focus is on quickly learning complete phrases in order to assimilate as quickly as possible.

I’ll also be using Anki desktop to create flashcards for the Turkish, mobile to study. And I’ll take every opportunity to study. Walking to the store, breaks at work, elevator time, etc. Any time that I’m not doing anything else that requires my full focus I will be studying. And all those little moments will add up very quickly, and by spacing out the learning process instead of cramming into one session is that it gives your brain time to process small pieces before you work on a new section.

And, to really put in the language learning process I will be watching Turkish historical dramas. I really love dramas and soap opera shows in other languages. I think this is due to me watching Spanish soaps when nothing else was on TV when I was younger. The shows I will choose between are Magnificent century, which I have watched the first episode of and love, and Dirillis Ertugrul which I have never seen but it looks very interesting!

Watching shows in a new language is a great way for your mind to pick up on accents, but more importantly the way words are strung together and how words are stressed.

Fitness

I’m working towards the planche, L-sit, back lever, and front lever. Am I going to get those in 30 days? Nope, not even close probably. But it is possible to get very simplified versions of them such as tucked planche, and tucked levers. And if I’m lucky I might even pull off one muscle up.

I also plan to work on my 800m time even though I haven’t found a track yet. But training for that will be pretty straight forwards. Mon: 16×50, Tues: 8×100, Wed: 4×200, Thur:2×400, Fri: 1×800 or something similar. This keeps workout times low and helps me build strength in every aspect of the 800m run.

I plan on working out 6 day on/1 day off. I’m going to work planche and L-sit together one day, and the levers the other day. Or I might do planche/front lever, L-sit/Back lever. It depends on how my grip strength is looking because you wouldn’t want to try to work bar exercises back to back if you don’t have the grip strength to really work it.

To simplify my training philosophy, as from Red Delta Training puts it, it’s all about tension. On some exercises I might hold a challenging position for one minute holds for sets of 3-5, then do reps of 8-12 of supporting exercises to really put work into the muscle and promote hypertrophy and strength gains.

On top of that I plan on working my acrobatic goals, the Arabian flip and the cart full, as well as my stretching goals, fingers to toes/side split, every other day.

To track my calories and macros I’ll be using myfitnesspal, which is a great app for anyone who is trying to stay on top of their diet no matter if you’re trying to gain or lose weight.

The diet that I follow is the high in the fat and protein department, but moderate in carbs. This allows me to have a very flexible diet, but also eat less because honestly, i don’t like eating all that much anyway. So the less food i have to eat while still able to meet my goals the better. I aim to consume 2900 a day, Carbs 25% or 181g, Protein 30% or 218g, and Fat 45% or 145g. My diet is mostly meat, veggies, peanut butter, beans, rice, and cheese. So far it has worked out very well for me. I don’t spent a lot of time at the table and I always feel full and focused.

Business is going to be pretty straight forwards. I’m going to split my time between building my client list through Craigslist, Talking to startups, and networking through my LinkedIn and in person.

I’m going to post and manage 3 post advertising my service, clean up and make my LinkedIn profile more professional in the first week. Build my contact list through local professionals. And trade time with them for free Starbucks by setting aside money for coffee meetups, a great idea by a Redditor where you invite out people you want to network with where you ask them for a conversation, in exchange you’ll buy them a coffee. Speaking of Reddit, two great resources you have to use if you aren’t already, r/entrepreneur and r/sales

The goal is to have 1-2 coffee meets setup every week, bring in and start working with a new client every week, and to finalize my role in a few startup companies I’d like to back with my sales skill. My moderate term goal for this is to be bringing in $2,000 a week by this time next year. My goal for this challenge is to have more connections in this new town that will help jump-start my success.

On a side note, I’m not sure what people are always going on about when they say they work full-time and don’t have time to make their dreams happen. I work 45 hours a week and I have tons of time. Just look at the math.

There are 168 hrs in a week, Take off 56 for 8 hrs of sleep a night and you have 112 left. Take another 45 off for work and you have 67. Divide that by 7 and you have 9.5 hours a day to work towards your goals. That’s a whole other shift you can put towards bettering yourself. And even if you only had 45 minutes to an hour to work on them, do it then. It’s better to get there slowly than not at all.

Hope this post helped a few people. I look forwards to getting this started off right!